Saturday, April 26, 2014

The Ballad of Mister Cucumber

My two nephews, Gluten and Spud, often bring home books from the school library to further their studies. This rainy Saturday the boys are getting their homework done so that in the afternoon we can head out into the woods and hunt hitchhikers along the nature trail that stretches from Erin to Hillsburgh. This weekend they are doing a project on Diversity, for mathematics class. To help them, they have stolen a number of picture filled books (from the 'early readers' section) for a source of pictures to be cut out and then pasted into their Diversity project. I care about their education, so I, Fenris Badwulf, am helping them. One of the sacrificed books is titled The Ballad of Mister Cucumber. It is a politically correct book. I am going to share it with you before I take the straight razor to it.

This is the Ballad of Mister Cucumber.

Your first clue that Mister Cucumber is politically correct is that Mister Cucumber is not a cucumber green, he is pink. There is only one line of print per page (in a large, low literacy friendly font, to be expected for books for low literacy readers passed on to an Ontario high school). Mister Cucumber is pink, and is surrounded by happy, smiling vegetation only found on acid trips to gay bars on drag night.

I am lonely

The next page features the pink Mister Cucumber addressing the reader. All of the other plants, snails, slugs, worms and other life forms of the acid consciousness of the illustrator are all sad. There are tears at the eye of Mister Cucumber.

Will you be my friend?

Page three of the narrative and the socialist theme is moving in on my wallet and property rights with all the silence of a constrictor snake towards a sleeping baby. Why develop discernment? Who is this pink cucumber that wants my friendship? I am filled with questions, but the politically correct brainwashing document wants me to just deed the gift of friendship to any who merely ask. How about the author of this tome, the illustrator, the publisher? Have they made friends with the pink cucumber?

My neck is sore

Page four. I do not know how to interpret this. As an experiment, I used my falsetto voice and quoted these four lines to Mrs. Badwulf. She punched me in the kidney. I asked her why, and she said you know why. Well, I do not know why. And there are no more pages to the Ballad, as some mischief maker has torn those pages from the book. This is the mystery of the lonely pink cucumber with a sore neck, as found in the abandoned reading section for high school students who perform far sub-par to high school reading level.

Somewhere, out there, one of you has page five and the answers we seek.